Thousands fleeing Puerto Rico amid economic crisis
The choice is heartbreaking: Stay to help other families, or leave to help your own.
That’s the calculation thousands in Puerto Rico are making. The bankruptcy of the U.S. commonwealth, the culmination of years of decline, has accelerated an exodus that’s adding to the island’s economic misery.
“I had to choose for my family,” said Aledie Amariah Navas Nazario, 39, a pulmonologist who left behind young asthma patients when she, her husband and two small daughters moved to Orlando, Fla.
The population drop is astonishing. The island has lost 2 percent of its people in each of the past three years. A comparable departure from the 50 states would mean 18 million people moving out since 2013. About 400,000 fewer Puerto Ricans live on an island of 3.4 million today compared with a decade ago, when its economy began contracting.
The departures have trapped Puerto Rico in a downward spiral. A grinding recession, with joblessness at 11.5 percent, and $74 billion mountain of debt that pushed the island to insolvency has made collecting taxes key to an economic rebound. At the same time, more Puerto Ricans from all walks of life are moving away to better their lives, meaning government revenue is dwindling.
Reasons for leaving were compelling enough for Navas Nazario, who treated asthma on an island where it’s more prevalent than anywhere else in the U.S. Puerto Rico’s economy had taken yet another leg down, and she was worried about her future income because of uncertainty about health insurance.
“I’m sad about not being able to take care of those kids anymore,” said Navas Nazario, who keeps in touch with former patients on Facebook. “You have to make a hard decision to leave relationships with friends and family just to get out, just because you need a better life.”
Puerto Rico’s bond debt has grown 87 percent since 2006. A simple way for individual islanders to avoid having to pay it is to move to the mainland.
The government doesn’t seem to have come to grips with the outflow. Puerto Rico’s turnaround plan assumes the population will shrink just 0.2 percent each year for the next decade.
“Most people believe that those forecasts in the fiscal plan are really, really optimistic and probably would have to be revised at some point,” said Sergio Marxuach, public policy director at the Center for the New Economy in San Juan.
The exodus isn’t confined to professionals. Among the throngs leaving are construction workers and taxi drivers. Research by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that college graduates make up the same proportion of emigres as they do in the general population.
“If people continue to leave the island at the pace that has been set in recent years, the economic potential of Puerto Rico will only continue to deteriorate,” authors including Jaison Abel and Giacomo De Giorgi wrote for the New York Fed.